


punctures

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo Amnesty Fills [18]
Category: The Dark Pictures: Little Hope (Video Game)
Genre: Amnesia, Blood and Injury, Drama, During Canon, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-25
Updated: 2021-02-25
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29699838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Daniel needs to be patched up.
Relationships: Andrew & Daniel (Dark Pictures)
Series: hc_bingo Amnesty Fills [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/942342
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	punctures

Daniel’s got a big, nasty hole in his chest.  
  
Andrew’s not sure how deep it is; it’s stopped bleeding for the most part, but Daniel is so pale his skin is almost _literally_ paper white, and that’s not good.  
  
“We gotta do something about that,” Andrew blurts out after they’ve put some distance between themselves and the church. He doesn’t hear the scraping of the David-Demon anymore, so he thinks it might be safe to slow down- at least for now, anyway.  
  
“Huh?” Daniel looks to where Andrew is pointing, sees the hole in his chest. “Oh.”  
  
Taylor swallows. “It doesn’t look great.”  
  
John looks hesitant, probably wants to keep moving, but grimaces when he gets a better look at the injury and nods. “It may not be bleeding anymore, but it’s… Open. And if it’s open, anything can get into it.”  
  
“We should stop.”  
  
“We should _not,_ ” Daniel responds immediately. “That… _Thing_ could catch up with us. The next hole it gives me might not be one I can walk off.”  
  
John and Taylor are silent; then, Taylor lifts a hand and points to a nearby house. “Probably no one inside, right?” She snorts, throws up her hands. “There’s no one in any of the houses in this fucking ghost town.”  
  
John is scratching the back of his head, sending wary glances down the street. “They may have a first aid kit.”  
  
“We can stay near the door in case we have to run,” Andrew promises. Tension thrums beneath his skin, rattles his bones; Daniel’s injury is not critical, he _could_ go without it being treated for a while longer, but Andrew is almost panicked at the thought of not tending to it.  
  
Daniel stares at them all for a long, long moment. Then his shoulders hunch, he sighs, and strolls past Andrew towards the house. Andrew follows after.  
  
As it happens, there is a first aid kit in the bathroom of the house: It is covered in a layer of dust and grime, as is the cabinet they find it in, but the seal on the kit is good and once opened the contents are fairly pristine.  
  
They sit on the front steps, which creak and sag dangerously under Andrew’s feet. John watches the street; Taylor watches the yard to the side of the house, tapping her foot anxiously and swaying back and forth.  
  
Andrew figures he should move quickly.  
  
“This is probably gonna hurt.”  
  
“Yeah, no shit,” Daniel mumbles as he pulls off his shirt. The wound is glaring, dark red against nearly chalk-white.  
  
(Has Daniel lost a lot of blood?  
  
It seems strange that he would be so pale and still be upright and energetic.)  
  
“Talk,” Andrew says, bunching up the wet cloth he intends to clean the wound with first. “It’ll distract you.”  
  
“About what? _Shit._ ” Daniel grimaces when the cloth starts dabbing at the edges of the injury; not a promising forecast for what it’ll feel like when the antiseptic is applied. Andrew is surprised at how little blood is smeared on Daniel’s chest, or on his shirt for that matter.  
  
(How is it that an _open hole_ in someone’s chest isn’t bleeding that much?)  
  
“I don’t know,” Andrew mumbles. “Anything not related to this, maybe?” He preps three cotton balls, soaking them in antiseptic so he can switch between them quickly when they get dirty. The faster this happens, the less hurt Andrew causes.  
  
Daniel is quiet for a moment, thinking- or zoned out, maybe.  
  
The words leave Andrew’s mouth almost without his consent:  
  
“What about your family?”  
  
“I have a brother and two sisters,” Daniel says, rallying a little.  
  
This would usually be the part where Andrew offers up his own status as a sibling, but unfortunately he’s got a big ol’ hole in the wall where that particular filing cabinet should be. “Older or younger?” he asks instead.  
  
“One older, two _young_ -” Daniel hisses, clenches his teeth. Andrew doesn’t linger with the cotton ball, dabbing quickly in the hopes that it will disinfect the wound sufficiently whilst also _not_ hurting as much as possible. “What about, uh- oh, right.”  
  
Andrew nods, not meeting Daniel’s eye as he picks up the second cotton ball. “Yeah, I’ve got nothing.”  
  
“Nothing?” A grimace this time, but Daniel must be getting used to the sting because he can still talk. “Like, you don’t remember _anything_ before here? Nothing from when you were a kid?”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
Blank, blank, blank.  
  
Everything’s coming up blank. No memories of his elementary school, no memories of little school-friends, no memories of playing with a pet, no memories of his parents or any siblings to speak of. He remembers nothing of high school, nothing or parties or girlfriends or driving a car- he doesn’t even remember if he’s always felt so calm and detached or if it’s a byproduct of the head-injury he got from the crash…  
  
It’s all lost to him.  
  
Andrew is keeping calm for now, but with every minute that passes in this hell the inability to recollect anything feels less temporary and more permanent, feels less like an accident and more like, more like…  
  
(Like this place doesn’t want him to remember.)  
  
The wound is clean and disinfected. Andrew presses the gauze from the kit over it (it just _barely_ covers the whole of it) and tapes it down with way more medical tape than necessary; even then, he’s pretty sure the minute Daniel has to run, or dodge, or does anything more than standing idle and a relaxed, the tape will peel off and the gauze will fall away.  
  
Making most, if not all of this, pointless.  
  
“That’ll have to do.”  
  
Daniel frowns as he puts his shirt back on, presses the gauze through the shirt (it’s still visible through the hole) and shrugs experimentally. “It’ll hold for now, at least,” he agrees.  
  
They stand up. “You feeling all right?” Andrew asks, because Daniel still looks… _Rough._ Really, really rough.  
  
Daniel shrugs again. “I’ll live.”  
 _  
Will you?_  
  
With Angela gone, it doesn’t seem like a guarantee anymore.  
  
Daniel claps Andrew on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, man. We’ll figure something out eventually.”  
  
Andrew nods. “Sure we will.”  
  
They return to Taylor and John, off for another walk through the fog.  
  
-End

**Author's Note:**

> So did anyone else notice in-game that after the confrontation with the demon, Daniel looks like death warmed over?
> 
> Like geez, he wasn't even hurt _that_ badly and he looks like a damn zombie.


End file.
